“We’ll be fine. I have no intention of turning an alley into a parking lot.”
Lila thumbed the edge of her laptop as they drove in silence, their earlier fight remembered but ignored by strained agreement.
That was fine by Lila. She had no wish to start another.
As the streetlights rushed past, two of the bikes split off from the group and turned down a side street. Another turned at the next light.
Only Tristan and Lila remained.
“Where are the others going?” she asked.
“Patience. They’ll meet us on foot after we find a good place.”
“You’re counseling me about patience?”
Tristan ignored her and circled the Wilson compound while she gauged the strength of the chairwoman’s network on a spare palm. They settled on an abandoned restaurant named Chaucer’s Ghost, one of the many businesses around the estate to go bust after the family’s dividends had dwindled.
Plywood covered the windows and the windows of its neighbors. All had been painted white, though the blurs of darker colors shone through, far-off echoes of frustration and boredom drawn out in paint. The street had not been swept in months, and only one street lamp still functioned. It slumped over the road as though put upon and exhausted from its efforts.
Tristan pulled into the alley beside the restaurant, killed the engine, and messaged the group. “I didn’t see any patrols,” he said, tapping his palm computer against his leg when he had finished.
“They don’t have the manpower for it. I suspect the chief is too busy taking care of the mess inside. What do they have to steal, anyway?”
“The emperor?”
Lila snorted. The Kruger addition to the Wilson name was not due to birth. It was a bit of pomp that Norma Wilson, Alex’s grandmother, had styled for herself. Eighty years ago, a rebellious niece of the king of Germany had slipped into port with the intention of making a new life for herself in America. Up to that point, the women in the Holy Roman Empire were looked at as little more than breeding cows. They lacked the ability to vote, own property, or manage their own finances, if they were lucky enough to have money at all. Ilse Kruger refused to settle for such a life. After her husband’s death, she cleared out his bank account in Burgundy, escaped to Saxony, and eventually settled in New Bristol. A master of accents, she even managed to start a business with no one the wiser, and her irritated father had little reason to locate her.
After all, he didn’t know she was pregnant at the time.
Unfortunately, the secret didn’t last. The king died, and Ms. Kruger’s father took the throne, also claiming the abandoned title of emperor. As his only child, Ms. Kruger suddenly became very important. Or, more correctly, her children would become important. Her eldest son would one day become the rightful heir. The emperor dispatched men to find her and return her to Germany. So did his counterpart in Italy, though only to cause mischief, rather than to aid.
Alex’s grandmother managed to intercept one of the men. After slipping him truth serum, she sent her people to find Ms. Kruger, nearly bankrupting her family to take over the woman’s company. After it lay in ruins, the chairwoman bought the woman’s mark at auction, her identity unknown to those attending. Both Ms. Kruger and her young son became Wilson slaves.
The fallout nearly unsettled the ceasefire between the Holy Roman Empire and the Allied Lands. Fortunately, the king’s new wife bore a son, and Ms. Kruger and her heir didn’t seem worth the trouble any longer—not enough to rescue, anyway. His partner, the Italian king, dissuaded him from going after her because the diplomatic situation was too tense. There were other heirs, and his grandson had never lived in Germany.
What was a daughter but another cow?
What was Ilse Kruger but the most rebellious and troublesome cow of all?
It enraged Lila to think of it. The only thing stranger was the idea that men should handle everyone’s affairs. Certainly she had met many competent men in highborn society, but putting them solely in charge of anything, much less an entire country, seemed insane.
But that’s how it was in the Holy Roman Empire. Even now, there existed a few aristocratic traditionalists who thought Peter Kruger should be the rightful king and emperor rather than King Lucas, not that the Italians would ever go for it. Lila thought them all barking mad. She had met the man several times growing up, and he was a sad disappointment. He barely knew how to read, and barely spoke when Lila attempted conversation.
It wasn’t all that surprising. Lila and Alex had snuck peeks at her grandmother’s parties when they were young. The chairwoman liked to drag out the small man from whatever hole he had been set to work in that day, force him to dress up in child’s costumes, and serve her guests wine. Occasionally the woman offered no costume and no clothes at all.
That was before the Interclass Abuse Act, which, among its many provisions, forced slave owners to educate their slaves’ children and ended much of the humiliation the poor man suffered. Strangely enough, the rightful heir to their enemy’s throne had been the inspiration for much of it. Too many highborn had been disgusted by the chairwoman’s antics during parties. They had begun taking a longer look at their own actions in response.
It hadn’t ended every torment Peter Kruger faced. Like Alex’s grandmother, Chairwoman Wilson still assigned him to every unpleasant task she could devise, all in an effort to skate around the act. But at least Mr. Kruger’s children could read and did not endure the same humiliations, though they were little better off. They would not be allowed to age out at eighteen, like other children of slaves. As the children of a German citizen, the law still considered them an enemy.
Lila wasn’t sure what her own mother had planned for them after she took charge of the Wilson
property, but at least she had no interest in humiliation.
Neither did Lila.
They agreed on another thing as well. While Alex’s mother and grandmother had always believed Ms. Kruger’s capture was their greatest triumph, Lila saw it for what it was. An overextension. A wasteful expenditure of resources on a luxury item that offered absolutely no return on investment. It had sounded the death knell for the Wilson family. They had never recovered from the loss of capital.
Besides, it was just crass. What sort of behavior could one expect from a family who had only attained highborn status with Norma Wilson’s rise? If Alex had not shown more decorum, then she and Lila could never have become friends. Her mother would never have allowed it.